BY RICK BASS
T
he fire is just one valley away, and coming with the wind, we just don’t know quite when. But fires or not, we’re cresting the back side of summer and now passing berry season; the year’s berries must still be gathered, if we are to have huckleberry jam in the coming year, and pancakes and muffins and milkshakes, if we are to have huckleberries on our ice cream, if we are to prepare huckleberry glazes for the grilled breasts of wild duck and grouse. Will the berries have the slight scent of wood smoke this year? I try to taste it as I sample them,
16 | July–August 2008 | fwp.mt.gov/mtoutdoors
SMOKY SUNSET FROM THE JOCKO LAKES FIRE NEAR SEELEY LAKE, 2007. PHOTO BY ANGIE KIMMEL
Fire Season
but can’t; they still taste like huckleberries. Or perhaps everything is so saturated with the scent of smoke that I no longer notice any difference. The valley is filling even fuller with smoke and heat, as if it is but a vessel for these things to be poured into it. I sit in the middle of a rich huckleberry patch and pluck berries contentedly, falling quickly into that daydreaming lull, the satisfied trance that seems to fill me, with its deeper echoes of older times, as if I am the vessel. And having wandered, luck-filled, into a place of bounty, I will do well to just sit here for a while,
